Finding the Strongest Presidential Nominee
21 August 2023 — Dr. Thomas O'Brien, Research Director, New Statecraft Institute
No decision that an American political party makes is remotely as important as selecting its presidential nominee. In any democratic nation, it is very unhealthy for a major party to coronate for renomination an unpopular president unopposed by any credible challengers. But in our two-party duopoly, it is an even more glaring failure of our national dialogue. The Democratic Party must do better than giving its voters the illusory "choice" of one candidate. The Party should add at least one other consensus candidate to the ballot. If President Biden suffers a heart attack, stroke, cancer or notable cognitive decline during the primary process with no strong back-up candidate, Trump would be even more likely to become our president again.
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Mr. Biden has been persistently unpopular. Many Americans believe he is not qualified to serve owing to his advanced age, and fully 70% of Americans did not want him to even stand for re-election. Polls consistently show that a presumptive Trump vs. Biden race is neck-and-neck. And these polls do not reveal the significant silent wedge of Trump sympathizers who refuse to participate in polls or to acknowledge considering a choice of Trump over Biden. Remember that Trump doesn't need to win 50% of total votes anyway; he only needs to win the Electoral College. Hillary Clinton beat Trump by 48.2% to 46.1% in the popular vote and still lost. Cornel West is also certain to drain millions more votes exclusively from Mr. Biden.
Health concerns are the biggest reason to find an alternative candidate. But these are not the only problems for Mr. Biden. His projected budgets will add huge new debt on future generations, despite rosy scenarios of no recessions and assuming that Congress will burden U.S. businesses with trillions in new taxes. His budgets also assume that Congress will enact another $3.5 trillion tax increase in 2025 when the Trump tax cuts expire. These budgets still underfund Social Security by 25%, with projected deficits of over $100 trillion in Social Security and Medicare over the next 30 years. And even with these unrealistic assumptions, his budgets will dump another $19 trillion of new debt over the next 10 years on future generations.
If Mr. Biden is re-nominated, the discussion will center around risks of health or mental problems, open borders, projected debt explosion, inflation and rising crime. Persuadable voters will hear this incessantly over the next 14 months. But every one of those vulnerabilities would disappear immediately if a consensus alternative candidate emerges. Fortunately, there are many admired leaders who could not only beat Mr. Biden in a primary but would also be dramatically stronger candidates in the general election.
Americans are looking for a bold departure from business as usual.
First published as an advertorial in the Washington Post on 21 August 2023.
- Jason Altmire
- Evan Bayh
- Michael Bloomberg
- Steve Bullock
- Maria Cantwell
- Lincoln Chafee
- Kent Conrad
- Tom Daschle
- John Delaney
- Harold Ford
- Heidi Heitkamp
- John Hickenlooper
- Angus King
- Amy Klobuchar
- Conor Lamb
- Mary Landrieu
- Mitch Landrieu
- Blanche Lincoln
- Claire McCaskill
- Jack Reed
- Susan Rice
- Ken Salazar
- Brian Schweitzer
- Kathleen Sebelius
- Jon Tester
- Tom Vilsack
- Mark Warner
Letter: Kamala Harris and the vice presidency
18 January 2024 — Dr. Thomas O'Brien
Kamala Harris should indeed reconsider seeking a second term as vice-president. Voters lack confidence in her, a big danger to Mr Biden's electability. Selecting someone like Evan Bayh, Tom Daschle or Susan Rice for vice-president would completely change the campaign narrative, providing a universally respected commander-in-chief in waiting. Ms Harris could become secretary of state or UN ambassador.
Want real facts? Stop reading garbage.
22 December 2023 — Dr. Thomas O'Brien
The Dec. 18 [2023] front-page article "Flood of falsehoods: AI fake news surges online" cited the bum advice that to avoid disinformation "people should watch for clues in articles, 'red flags' such as 'really odd grammar' or errors in sentence construction." The real solution is to stop reading garbage. Most publications with real, paid writers and editors to double-check the facts have paywalls, which help pay to produce real news.
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False information on the internet is everywhere. But the news sections of even ideologically divergent sites such as the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times agree on most of the facts. Patronize real news sites that pay journalists to fact-check every assertion.
I felt a funeral, in my brain
16 January 2021 — Dr. Thomas O'Brien
The Jan. 3 news article "Glimmers of hope work their way through the darkness of 2020" helpfully pointed to hopeful developments. But the call for complacency on biodiversity — "there were both negative and positive developments on the biodiversity front in 2020…" — was a grave disservice to Post readers.
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We are already in a sixth great wave of extinction, "tens to hundreds of times higher" than in prior history, according to the New York Times. Twenty-four percent of native bees "are threatened with extinction," The Post has reported. We have "insect Armageddon" and "insect apocalypse," says the Times. The Associated Press reported "the Midwest lost four percent of its bugs in a year," a pace for near-extinction in 25 years. We are engineering an insect desert.
Many iconic species — sage grouse, grizzly bears, and great cats and wolves — are already extinct in more than 90 percent of their historic ranges. If anyone is optimistic about biodiversity, they're either ignorant or delusional. Yes, we need hope, but we also need to confront very hard facts.
The economics of mass transit
20 March 2020 — Dr. Thomas O'Brien
The March 14 editorial "A step too far" criticizing free mass transit got the economics dead wrong. The editorial said, "It's expensive." Running the same number of trains and buses per day costs exactly the same down to the penny. In fact, administrative expenses can be reduced by making service free in off-peak periods. The only question is who pays the bill. Reducing the costs of maintaining fare machines and transaction delays on buses would also be improvements.
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Preserving fares only during peak periods causes potential riders to shift travel times to benefit from free riders. An hour one way or the other allows for birding strolls in Rock Creek Park or Malcolm X Park and patronizing local businesses.
The editorial said subsidized mass transit "might even take a few cares off the road." The first law of economics is that when you make something less expensive, more of it is consumed and vice versa. Adding a few pennies per gallon of gasoline would take loads of cars off the roads. A free ride is mighty attractive, and making car commuting more expensive makes free transit look more attractive still.
Many bus riders are far below median income, so free rides would decrease their cost of living and reward the virtuous bus riders. Getting drivers off the road reduces the misery of gridlock, and saves the biosphere for future centuries.
Let's get centrists singing along
10 July 2018 — Dr. Thomas O'Brien
E.J. Dionne Jr. was wrong in discouraging centrists in his July 5 op-ed, "The centrist chorus is off-key." His own numbers indicated that 12 percent of Americans fall into the "pure independent" category. In a 50-50 nation, 12 percent looks like the margin of victory. And 41 percent of Democrats "put themselves at the center of the ideological spectrum," as do 22 percent of Republicans. Centrist voters choose the lesser of two evils because they are presented with a choice between two extremes.
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Instead of cursing the darkness, let's light candles. Open primaries allow centrist voters a voice in the electoral process. Instant runoffs allow voters to pick a unifying healer over the ideological bomb-thrower. Nonpartisan redistricting encourages more unifying candidates. Establishing a single national primary day also encourages awareness and participation rather than leaving primary voting to the tiny extremist blocs of hardcore party activists. Mail-in voting, increased early voting, automatic and same-day voter registration, and weekend elections would also increase participation in the electoral process.
A Better Way to Elect a President?
18 November 2017 — Dr. Thomas O'Brien
Your editorial ("Let the People Pick the President," Nov. 8) is correct that the Electoral College must be superseded. But the details of the interstate National Popular Vote compact as currently written are suboptimal. Instead of giving the presidency to the plurality winner in a seven-candidate race, instant runoff would ensure that the majority decides between the two top candidates.
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Compact opponents who present nightmare scenarios of endless vote recounts and litigation in close elections can be won over by using the popular vote only when one candidate has won a clear victory margin of one million votes or a 1 percent margin in the popular vote. Thus a recount litigation in a razor-thin election would be limited to only one or two contested states.
It is beyond dispute that the candidate who wins the popular vote by millions of votes should become president.
